NEW YORK (RNS) — An estimated 60,000 marchers and more than 100,000 spectators gathered on Fifth Avenue on Sunday (May 31) for New York City’s Israel Day Parade, an annual event that has drawn criticism from those who oppose Israel’s military actions and government.

By not attending the event, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a pro-Palestinian activist and staunch critic of Israel, became the first sitting New York City mayor since the parade’s founding in 1964 to skip it. 

The parade’s supporters say participation is foremost about supporting the New York Jewish community — which has faced escalating antisemitic incidents since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza — rather than the actions of the Israeli government. The city is home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel.

Several other state and city leaders joined in the festivities and gave speeches, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and former NYC mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Eric Adams. Jessica Tisch, the city’s Jewish police commissioner, was a marshal.

“What an incredible display of unity, love, and resilience as tens of thousands of New Yorkers turned out for the Israel Day Parade in NYC,” Adams tweeted after the parade. “Today, we boycotted antisemitism and sent a powerful message: New York will always stand with its Jewish community, and New Yorkers will always stand with Israel.”

A February poll conducted by the Jewish Federations of North America found that 9 out of 10 Jews said they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic country, but only one-third said they identify as a Zionist — a word that has become a pejorative in many circles. While those statistics indicate how Jewish support for Israel’s policies — especially after nearly three years of war with Hamas, Hezbollah and now Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — has eroded, the poll suggests that many of them “are not rejecting Israel’s existence or the idea of a Jewish state. They are reacting to an understanding of Zionism that includes policies, ideologies, and actions that they oppose, and do not want to be associated with,” according to Mimi Kravetz, chief impact officer for JFNA.  

In an op-ed for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency days before the parade, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, argued that the parade “has become a litmus test, pressuring Jews essentially to sign on to the Israeli government’s agenda to participate in mainstream communal Jewish life, while also reducing New York Jews to a single aspect of Jewish identity, namely, a connection to another country.”

At the parade, Gordon Josey, a Westchester, New York, resident, said that support for Israel as a country should not be dependent on its government’s actions.

“I’m not a Trump supporter, but I’ll still be celebrating the Fourth of July as an American,” he said. “People can disagree with Israel’s government but still support the only country where Jews are 100% safe and accepted.”

Amid rising antisemitism, this year’s parade theme, “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” slapped back at age-old antisemitic tropes claiming that Jews can never be loyal citizens of the countries where they live.

For Mark Medin, executive vice president of the UJA-Federation of New York, watching group after group of American Jews joyfully marching in the parade, singing Hebrew songs and waving American and Israeli flags “was an overwhelming display of pride and love for Israel and for America and for Judaism — you can love all these entities at the same time.” 

Standing behind New York Police Department barricades in what was described as an unprecedented level of security precautions for an Israel Day Parade, spectators said they felt safe wearing yarmulkes and Jewish stars around their necks — something many Jews have stopped doing out of fear of being targeted by antisemites, as visibly Jewish residents and visitors to New York have increasingly been harassed or attacked in recent years.

“We came to the parade to show support for Israel and to protest antisemitism,” said David Himber, a Long Island resident. “It’s important for everybody, regardless of their view of Israel, to support Jews in New York and around the world.”

Spectators and marchers agreed that the parade was the most well-attended and joyous Israel parade in recent memory. While it featured almost none of the polished marching bands and grand floats seen in other parades, the enthusiasm of its participants — mostly local Jewish schools, youth groups, synagogues and communal organizations — gave the parade the feel of a hometown event.

Not all of the participants were Jewish. A group called the Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress and another called the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council also marched.

By contrast, Mamdani’s refusal to attend what is considered one of the largest and most public displays of Jewish and Israeli pride in America has angered many Jews, who view the parade not only as a demonstration of support for the Jewish homeland but also as a vital celebration of Jewish communal unity and identity at a time when antisemitic incidents in New York occur on an almost daily basis.

“The question is not whether a mayor may criticize Israel. Of course he may,” Stephen M. Flatow, president of the Religious Zionists of America, blogged in The Times of Israel. “The question is whether the mayor of New York City understands that for much of the Jewish community, Zionism is not a foreign-policy preference. It is part of Jewish identity, Jewish history, Jewish memory and Jewish survival.”

Flatow wrote that generations of New York mayors have marched not because they agreed with every Israeli policy but because they recognized the parade’s importance to New York’s Jewish population.

Moshe Davis, former executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism under Adams, told The Jerusalem Post that the parade is a “celebration of the Jewish community that helped build this city, and the enduring relationship between New York and Israel — a relationship that has made our hospitals, our universities, and our economy stronger.”

At the same time, mostly left-leaning American Jews have expressed discomfort with the parade, arguing it amounts to support for the far-right government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some said that the presence of more than a dozen Israeli lawmakers, including Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, at Sunday’s parade proves their point.   

“I truly look forward to the day when leaders of major New York Jewish institutions are more incensed by Smotrich and other Kahanists marching in the Israel Day Parade than they are about the mayor skipping it,” Jacobs, the T’ruah chief executive, said on her Facebook account. 

Rather than bringing Jews together, she said, the parade “doubles down on the most politicized and contentious issue dividing Jewish communities,” referring to Israel. She called for an alternative liberal Jewish parade that would focus on Jewish culture, religion and communal life, in which Israel would be just one component for the Jews who support it.  

However, Gavin Rostin, 13, who came to the parade with his family from upstate New York, said for him, the parade was simply a joyful way to spend time with fellow Jews.

“Where we live there aren’t many Jews,” he said, “so we came to be with our community.”